AN ADDRESS 

AT THE MASSACHUSETTS CLUB 
BOSTON 



CONTINENTAL UNION 



BY 

WHITELAW REID 



A 
CONTINENTAL UNION 

CIVIL SERVICE FOR THE ISLANDS 



AN ADDRESS 

AT THE MASSACHUSETTS CLUB, BOSTON 
MARCH 3, 1900 






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BY 

VTHITELAW REID 



^ 



NEW YORK 
HENRY HALL 

1900 










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A CONTINENTAL UNION 

CIVIL SERVICE FOR THE ISLANDS 

AN ADDRESS 
AT THE MASSACHUSETTS CLUB, BOSTON, MARCH 3, 1900 

A third of a century ago or more, I had the honor to be a 
guest at this club, which met then, as now, in Young's Hotel 
It has ever since been a pleasure to recall the men of Boston 
who gathered about the board, interested, as now, in the affairs 
of the Republic to which they were at once ornament and de- 
fence. Frank Bird sat at the head. Near him was Henry 
Wilson. John M. Forbes was here, and John A. Andrew, and 
George S. Boutwell, and George L. Stearns, and many another, 
eager in those times of trial to seek and know the best thing to 
be done to serve this country of our pride and love. They were 
practical business men, true Yankees in the best sense; and 
they spent no time then in quarrelling over how we got into 
our trouble. Theii* one concern was how to get out, to the 
greatest advantage of the country. 

Honored now by another opportunity to meet with the club, 
I can do no better than profit by this example of your earlier 
days. You have asked me to speak on some phase of the Phil- 
ippine question. I would like to concentrate your attention 
upon the present and practical phase; and to withdraw it 'for 
the time from things that are past and cannot be changed. 

Stare decisis. There are some things settled. Have we not a Things that 
better and more urgent use for our time now than in showing """"' *>^ 
why some of us would have liked them settled differently ? In 
my State there is a dictum by an eminent Judge of the Court of 
Appeals, so familiar now as to be a commonplace, to the effect 
that when that Court has rendered its decision, there are only 
two things left to the disappointed advocate. One is to accept 
the result attained, and go to work on it as best he can ; the 
other, to go down to the tavern and " cuss " the Court. I want 
to suggest to those who dislike the past of the Philippine ques- 



4 A CONTINENTAL UNION 

tion that there is more important work pressing upon you at 
this moment than to cuss the Court. You cannot change tlie 
past, but you may prevent some threatened sequences, which 
even in your eyes would be far greater calamities. 

There is no use bewailing the war with f^ain. Nothing can 
undo it, and its results are upon us. There is no use arguing 
that Dewey should have abandoned his conquest. He didn't. 
There is no use regretting the Peace of Paris. For good or for 
ill, it is a part of the supreme law of the land. There is no use 
begrudging the twenty millions. They ai'e paid. There is no 
use depreciating the islands, East or West. They are the prop- 
erty of the United States, by an immutable title, which, what- 
ever some of our own people say, the whole civilized world 
recognizes and respects. There is no use talking about getting 
rid of them ; — giving them back to Spain, or turning them over 
to Aguinaldo, or simply running away from them. Wlioever 
thinks that any one of these things could be done, or is still 
open to profitable debate, takes his observations, — will you 
pardon me the liberty of saying it ? — takes his observations too 
closely within the horizon of Boston bay to know the American 
people. 

They have not been persuaded and they cannot be persuaded 
that this is an inferior Government, incapable of any duty 
Providence (through the acts of a wicked Administration, if 
you choose,) may send its way, — duties which other nations 
could discharge, but we cannot. They do not and will not be- 
lieve that it was any such maimed, imperfect, misshapen cripple 
from bii'th for which our forefathers made a place in the family 
of Nations. Nor are they misled by the sudden cry that, in a 
populous region, thronged by the ships and traders of all coun- 
tries, where their own prosecution of a just war broke down 
whatever guarantees for order had previously existed, they are 
violating the natural rights of man, by enforcing oi'der. Just 
as little are they misled by the other cry that they are violating 
the right of self-government, and the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and the Constitution of the United States by preparing 
for the distracted, warring tribes of that region, such local gov- 
ernment as they may be found capable of conducting, in their 
various stages of development from pure barbarism toward civ- 
ilization. The American people know they are thus proceeding 
to do just what Jefferson did in the vast region he bought 
from Franco — without the consent, by the waj', either of its 
sovereign or its inhabitants. They know they are following in 



CIVIL SERVICE FOR THE ISLANDS 5 

the exact path of all the constructive statesmen of the RepubHc, 
from the days of the man who wrote the Declaration, and of 
those who made the Constitution, down to the days of the men 
who conquered California, bought Alaska, and denied the right 
of self-government to Jefferson Davis. They simply do not 
believe that a new light has been given to Mr. Bryan, or to the 
better men who are aiding him, greater and purer than was 
given to Washington, or to Jefferson, or to Lincoln. 

And so I venture to repeat, without qualification or reserve, 
that what is past cannot be changed. Candid and dispassionate 
minds, knowing the American people of all political shades and 
in all sections of the country, can see no possibility that any 
party in power, whether the present one or its opponent, would 
or could now or soon, if ever, abandon or give back one foot of 
the territory gained in the late war, and ours now by the 
supreme law of the land and with the assent of the civilized 
world. As well may you look to see California, which your own 
Daniel Webster, quite in a certain modern Massachusetts style, 
once declared in the Senate to be not worth a dollar, now aban- 
doned to Mexico. 

It seems to me then idle to thresh over old straw when the No abstrac 
fi-rain is not only winnowed but gone to the mill. And so I am """^ «■■ 
not here to discuss abstract questions, as for example whether m 
the year 1898 the United States was wise in going to war with 
Spain, though on that I might not greatly disagree with the 
malcontents ; or as to the wisdom of expansion ; or as to the 
possibility of a republic's maintaining its authority over a people 
without their consent. Nor am I here to apologize for my part 
in making the nation that was in the wrong and beaten in the 
late war pay for it in territory. I have never thought of deny- 
ing or evading my own full share of responsibility in that matter. 
Conscious of a duty done, I am happily independent enough to 
be measurably indifferent as to a mere present and temporary 
effect. Whatever the verdict of the men of Massachusetts to-day, 
I contentedly await the verdict of their sons. 

But, on the other hand, I am not here either to launch charges 
of treason against any opponent of these policies, who neverthe- 
less loves the institutions founded on these shores by your 
ancestors, and wishes to perpetuate what they created. Least 
of all would it occur to me to utter a word in disparagement of 
your senior Senator, of whom it may be said with respectful 
and almost affectionate regard that he bears a warrant as 
1* 



apologies 
or attacks. 



6 A CONTINENTAL UNION 

authentic as that of the most distinguished of his predecessors 
to speak for the conscience and the cultui'e of Massachusetts. 
Nor shall any reproach be uttered by me against another 
eminent son of the Commonwealth and servant of the Republic, 
who was expected, as one of the oflScers of your Club told me, 
to make this occasion distinguished by his presence. He has 
beeu i-epresented as resenting the unchangeable past so sternly 
that he hopes to aid in defeating the party he has helped to lead 
through former trials to present glory. If so, and if from the 
young and unremembering reproach should come, be it ours, 
silent and walking backward, merely to cast over him the mantle 
of his own honored service. 

Common duty No, no ! Let US have a truce to profitless disputes about 
and a common -^yhat cannot be reversed. Censure us if you must. Even 
danger. strike at your old associates and your own party if you will, 

and when you can, without harming causes you hold dear. But 
for the duty of this houi', consider if there is not a common 
meeting groimd and instant necessity for union in a rational 
effort to avert present perils. This, then, is my appeal. Dis- 
agree as we may about the past, let us to-day at least see 
straight — see things as they are. Let us suspend disputes 
about what is done and cannot be undone, long enough to rally 
all the forces of goodwill, all the undoubted courage and zeal 
and patriotism that are now at odds, in a devoted effort to 
meet the greater dangers that are upon us. 

For the enemy is at the gates. More than that, there is some 
reason to fear that, through dissensions from within, he may 
gain the citadel. In their eagerness to embarrass the advocates 
of what has been done, and with the vain hope of in some way 
undoing it, and so lifting this Nation of seventy-five millions 
bodily backward two years on its path, there are many who are 
still putting forth all their energies in straining our Constitution 
and defying our history, to show that we have no possessions 
whose people are not entitled to citizenship and ultimately to 
Statehood. Grant that, and instead of reversing engines safely 
in mid-career, as they vainly hope, they must simply plunge us 
over the precipice. The movement began in the demand that our 
Dingley tariff— as a matter of right, not of policy, for most of 
these people denounce the tariff itself as barbarous— that our 
Dingley tariff should of necessity be extended over Puerto Rico 
as an integral part of the United States. Following an assent 



CIVIL SERVICE FOR THE ISLANDS 7 

to this must have come inevitably all the other rights and priv- 
ileges belonging to citizenship, and then no power could prevent 
the admission of the State of Puerto Rico. 

Some may think that in itself would be no great thing; 
though it is for you to say how Massachusetts would relish hav- 
ing this mixed population, a little more than half colonial Span- 
ish, the rest negro and halfbreed, illiterate, alien in language, 
alien in ideas of right, interests and government, send in from 
the mid-Atlantic, nearly a third of the way over to Africa, two 
Senators to balance the votes of Mr. Hoar and Lodge;— for you 
to say how Massachusetts would regard the spectacle of her Sen- 
atorial vote nullified, and one-third of her representation in the 
House offset on questions, for instance, of sectional and trop- 
ical interest, in the government of this Oontinent, and in the 
administration of this precious heritage of our fathers. 

Or, suppose Massachusetts to be so little Yankee (in the best 
sense still) that she could bear all this without murmur or objec- 
tion : — is it to be imagined that she can lift other States in this 
generation to her altruistic level? How would Kansas for ex- 
ample enjoy being balanced in the Senate, and nearly balanced 
in the House, on questions relating to the irrigation of her arid 
plains, or the protection of her beet-root industry, or on any 
others affecting the great central regions of this continent by 
these voices from the watery waste of the ocean? Or how 
would West Virginia or Oregon or Connecticut, or half a dozen 
others of similar population, regard it, to be actually outvoted 
in their own home, on their own continent, by this Spanish and 
negro waif from the mid- Atlantic? 

All this, in itself, may seem to some unimportant, negligible, 
even trivial. At any rate it would be inevitable; since no one 
is wild enough to believe that Puerto Rico can be turned 
back to Spain, or bartered away, or abandoned by the gene- 
ration that took it. But make its people citizens now, and you 
have already made it, potentially, a State. Then behind 
Puerto Rico stands Cuba, and behind Cuba, in time, stand 
the whole of the West Indies, on whom that law of political 
gravitation which John Quincy Adams described, will be per- 
petually acting with redoubled force. And behind them,— 
no, far ahead of them,— abreast of Puerto Rico itself, stand 
the Philippines! The Constitution which our Fathers rever- 
ently ordained for the United States of America is thus tortured 
by its professed friends into a crazy quilt, under whose dirty folds 



Republic. 



8 A CONTINENTAL UNION 

must huddle the United States of America, of the West Indies, 
of the East Indies, and of Polynesia ; and Pandemonium is 
upon us. 

The degrada- I imploi'e you, as thinking men, pause long enough to realize 
n"" "r"** *^® degradation of the Republic thus calmly contemplated by 
those who proclaim this to be our Constitutional duty toward 
our possessions. The Repiiblican institutions I have been trained 
to believe in were institutions founded, like those of New Eng- 
land, on the Church and the School House. They constitute a 
system only likely to endure among a people of high virtue and 
high intelligence. The Republican Government built up on this 
continent, while the most successful in the history of the world, 
is also the most complicated, the most expensive and often the 
slowest. Such are its complications and checks and balances 
and iuterdepeudencies, which tax the intelligence, the patience 
and the virtue of the highest Caucasian development, that it is 
a system absolutely unworkable by a group of Oriental and 
tropical races, more or less hostile to each other, whose highest 
type is a Chinese and Malay half breed, and among whom millions, 
a majority possibly, are far below the level of the pure Malay. 

What holds a nation together, unless it be community of in- 
terests, character and language, and contiguous territory? 
What would more thoroughly insure its speedily flying to pieces 
than the lack of every one of these requisites I Over and over 
the clearest-eyed students of history have predicted om- own 
downfall even as a continental Republic, in si^ite of our measura- 
ble enjoyment of all of them. How near we all believed we 
came to it once or twice ! How manifestly under the incon- 
gruous hodge-podge of additions to the Union thus proposed, 
we should be organizing with Satanic skill the exact conditions 
which have invariably led to such downfalls elsewhere ! 

Before the advent of the United States, the history of the 
world's efforts at Republicanism was a monotonous record of 
failiu-e. Your very schoolboys are taught the reason. It was 
because the average of intelligence and morality was too low ; 
because they lacked the self-restrained, self-governing quality, 
developed in the Anglo-Saxon bone and fibre through all the 
centuries since Runnymede ; because they grew unwieldy and 
lost cohesion by reason of unrelated territory, alien races and 
languages, and inevitable territorial and climatic conflicts of 
interest. 

On questions \atally affecting the welfare of this Continent it 



CIVIL SERVICE FOR THE ISLANDS 9 

is inconceivable, unthinkable, that even altruistic Massachu- 
setts should tolerate having two Senators and thirteen Repre- 
sentatives neutralized by as many from Mindanao. Yet Mindanao 
has a greater population than Massachusetts, and its Mahome- 
tan Malays are as keen for the conduct of public affairs, can talk 
as much — and look as shrewdly for the profit of it ! 

There are cheerful, happy-go-lucky public men, who assure 
us that the National digestion has been proved equal to any- 
thing. Has it ! Are we content, for example, with the way we 
have dealt with the negro problem in the Southern States! 
Do we think the suffrage question there is now on a permanent 
basis, which either we, or our Southern friends can be proud of, 
while we lack the courage either honestly to enforce the rule of 
the majority, or honestly to sanction a limitation of suffrage 
within lines of intelligence and thrift? How well would oiu- 
famous National digestion probably advance, if we filled up our 
Senate with twelve or fourteen more Senators, representing 
conditions incomparably worse? 

Is it said this danger is imaginary ? At this moment some of 
the purest and most patriotic men in Massachusetts, along with 
a great many of the very worst in the whole country, are vehe- 
mently declaring that our new possessions are already a part of 
the United States, that in spite of the treaty which reserved the 
question of citizenship and political status for Congress, their 
people are ah-eady citizens of the United States, and that no 
part of the United States can be arbitrarily and permanently 
excluded from Statehood. 

The immediate contention, to be sure, is only about Puerto 
Rico, and it is only a very little island. But who believes he 
can stop the avalanche ? What wise man at least will take the 
risk of starting it ? Who imagines that we can take in Puerto 
Rico and keep out nearer islands when they come I Powerful 
elements are already pushing Cuba. Practically everybody rec- 
ognizes now that we must retain control of Cuba's foreign rela- 
tions. But beyond that, the same influences that came so near 
hurrying us into a recognition of the Cuban Republic and the 
Cuban debt are now sure that Cuba wiU very shortly be so 
" Americanized " (that is, overrun with American speculators) 
that it cannot be denied admission — that in fact it will be as 
American as Florida! And, after Cuba, the deluge! Who 
fancies that we could then keep Santo Domingo and Hayti out ; 
or any West India island that applied ; or our friends, the Kan- 
akas ? Or who fancies that after the baser sort have once tasted 



10 A CONTINENTAL UNION 

blood in the form of such rotten-borough States, and have learned 
to form their larger combinations with them, we shall still be able 
to admit as a matter of right a part of the territory exacted 
from Spain, and yet deny admission as a matter of right to the 
rest? 

The Nation has lately been renewing its affectionate memories 
of a man who died in his effort to hold on, with or without their 
consent, to the States we already have on this continent, but 
who never dreamed of casting a di-agnet over the world's archi- 
pelagoes for more. Do we remember his birthday and forget 
his words ? " This Government, (meaning that under the Con- 
stitution ordained for the United States of America,) this 
Government cannot permanently endure, half slave, half free." 
Who disputes it now ? Well, then, can it endure half civilized 
and enlightened, half barbarous and pagan ; half white, half 
black, brown, yellow and mixed; half northern and western, half 
tropical and Oriental ; one half a homogeneous Continent, the 
other half in myriads of islands, scattered halfway around the 
globe, but all eager to participate in ruling this Continent which 
our fathers with fire and sword redeemed from barbarism and 
subdued to the uses of the highest civilization. 

Clamor that I will uot iusult youi' intelligence or your patriotism by imag- 
need not iuing it possible that in view of such considerations you could 
consent to the madman's policy of taking these islands we con- 
trol into full partnership with the States of this Union. Nor 
need you be much disturbed by the interested outcries as to the 
injustice you do by refusing to admit them. 

When it is said you are denying the natural rights Mr. Jeffer- 
son proclaimed, you can answer that you are giving these peo- 
ple, in their distant islands, the identical form of government 
Mr. Jefferson himself gave to the territories on this continent 
which he bought. When it is said you are denying our own 
cardinal doctrine of self-government, you can point to the ar- 
rangements for establishing every particle of self-government 
with which these widely different tribes can be safely trusted, 
consistently with your responsibility for the preservation of 
order and the protection of life and property in that archipel- 
ago; and the pledge of more, the moment they are found capa- 
ble of it. When you are asked, as a leading champion asked 
the other night at Philadelphia, " Does your liberation of one 
people give you the right to subjugate another?" you can an- 
swer him: "No, nor to allow and aid Aguiualdo to subjugate 



disturb. 



CIVIL SERVICE FOR THE ISLANDS 11 

them either, as you proposed." When the idle quibble that 
after Dewey's victory Spain had no sovereignty to cede is re- 
peated, it may be asked why acknowledge then that she did cede 
it in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and deny that she could cede it in 
the Philippines ? Finally, when they tell you in mock heroics, 
appi'opriated from the great days of the anti-slavery struggle for 
the cause now of a pinchbeck Washington, that no results of the 
irrevocable past two years are settled, that not even the title to 
our new possessions is settled, and never will be until it is set- 
tled according to their notions, you can answer that then the 
title to Massachusetts is not settled, nor the title to a square 
mile of land in most of the States from ocean to ocean. Over 
practically none of it did we assume sovereignty by the consent 
of the inhabitants. 

Quite possibly these controversies may emban-ass the Govern- Where is your 
ment and threaten the security of the party in power. New feai interest ? 
and perplexing responsibilities often do that. But is it to the in- 
terest of the sincere and patriotic among the discontented to 
produce either result ? The one thing sure is that no party in 
power in this country will dare abandon these new possessions. 
That being so, do those of you who regret it prefer to lose all 
influence over the outcome ? While you are repining over what 
is beyond recall, events are moving on. If you do not help 
shape them, others, without your high principle and purity of 
motive, may. Can you wonder if, while you are harassing the 
Administration with impracticable demands for an abandon- 
ment of territory which the American people will not let go, less 
unselfish influences are busy presenting candidates for all the 
offices in its organization? If the friends of a proper Civil 
Service persist in chasing the ignis fatuus of persuading 
Americans to throw away territory, while the politicians are 
busy crowding their favorites into the territorial oiBces, who 
will feel free from self-reproach at the results ? Grant that the 
situation is bad. Can there be a doubt of the duty to make the 
best of it ? Do you ask how ? By being an active patriot, not 
a passive one. By exerting, and exerting now, when it is needed, 
every form of influence, personal, social, political, moral — the 
influence of the Clubs, the Chambers of Commerce, the manu- 
factories, the Colleges and the Churches, in favor of the purest, 
the ablest, the most scientific, the most disinterested — in a word 
the best possible Civil Service for the new possessions that 
the conscience and the capacity of America can produce, with 



12 A CONTINENTAL UNION 

the most liberal use of all the material available from native 
sources. 

I have done. I have no wish to argue, to defend or to attack. 
I have sought only to point out what I conceive to be the pres- 
ent danger and the present duty. It is not to be doubted that 
all such considerations will summon you to the high resolve 
that you will neither shame the Republic by shirking the duty 
its own victory entails, nor despoil the Republic by abandoning 
its rightful i^ossessions, nor degrade the Republic by admissions 
of unfit elements to its Union ; but that you will honor it, en- 
rich it, ennoble it, by doing your utmost to make the adminis- 
tration of these possessions worthy of the Nation that Washing- 
ton founded and Lincoln preserved. My last word is an appeal 
to stand firm and stand all together for the Continental Union 
and for a pure Civil Service for the Islands. 



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